I can still remember what I was wearing…a calico top and white wrap around skirt. I had sewed both of them during that long, hot, and humid July, waiting for the baby to arrive. And now I was waiting for Clay’s bus to pull into the station. I hadn’t seen him for 6 weeks and was anxious to have a glimpse of him in uniform, to hear him laugh in real life. Since we had said our goodbyes he had had a haircut, I had had a baby. Now we were a real family, heading to some as yet unnamed destination.

On our way home I listened to one story after another about his drill sergeant, the 20 mile hikes with full gear and backpacks, the new recruits who didn’t speak English. We held hands and dreamed about where home might be next. He was excited to meet his daughter and I was excited for that, too.

Neither of us had had any real experience with babies. As a teenager, I had only babysat for preschoolers and older children. In fact, before I came home from the hospital with Mollie, I had never even changed a diaper. Clay had never held a baby. So it was with a great sense of wonder that he reached his large hands down inside the bassinet and took this little one into his arms. Her head could lie in his hand while her feet barely touched the inside of his elbow. She opened her eyes wide, studying this new person who made funny faces at her and spoke in whispered tones. It was love at first sight.

No one told Clay that he was supposed to build a relationship with his daughter, he just did. As soon as she was old enough to go along, he took her every time he needed to run an errand. She toddled around after him in the yard, in the basement, wherever he was working when he was home. He sang to her, read to her, played with her, gave her bathes, and diapered and fed her. And she adored him. When she was big enough, she sat in his lap on the tire swing in our front yard and laughed and laughed as they went higher and higher. She wasn’t afraid because Dad was holding her.

Clay had introduced us all to wonderful classical music from the time the children were small and he would often tell us interesting things he remembered from the music history class he had taken in college. So when Mollie started playing little songs on Grandma’s piano, we knew it was time for lessons. Clay and I agreed that we would use his Christmas bonus check that year to buy our own piano. Though the older boys were also taking lessons, they didn’t love it like Mollie did. Not once did we have to tell her to practice and by the time she was in high school she was spending several hours every day listening to new music and playing ever more complicated pieces.

Clay could always tell when Mollie was in a musical slump and so he inspired her by bringing home interesting CD’s of artists he knew she had not heard of. His encouragement of her gifts and interests were the precious expressions of his commitment to helping her fulfill a calling the Lord had placed on her life. Years later while she was in college and when a horrible hand accident only days before her junior piano recital left all of us wondering if she might ever play the piano again, Clay immediately went to the music store to buy her CD’s to, once again, inspire her during the most devastating of times.

Clay and I have loved being parents and sharing the joy of having a daughter is a special blessing from the Lord that still amazes us. We have watched her grow from that tiny pink rosebud of a baby into the most lovely and creative of women who delights us every day in her love for the Lord and for her husband and children. God has gifted her in ways we never would have dreamed of that one July day when we held her and could only imagine what she might become. Later this month as she celebrates her birthday, we will be thanking God for this godly and most cherished of daughters.

Today as I look at the important relationship between a father and his daughter, I am more convinced than ever that a dad’s most significant roles in her life are to love and cherish her, to teach her what is important by example, and to do all that he can to see her gifts, talents, and callings flourish to be used for God’s glory. Anything less than that is squandering one of the loveliest and most amazing treasures God can ever bring into the life of a father.

* I had wanted to put a picture here of Mollie and Clay but my scanner is on the blink. Instead I put this picture of our son and his daughter!